


Only Superheroes Run From Their Power

by TheNarator



Series: Only You (Could Do This To Me) [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dark, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Obsession, Possessive Behavior, dark as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5184986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scene in the pipeline from 1x23 "Fast Enough" where Cisco finds out he's a metahuman, told from Eobard's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Superheroes Run From Their Power

**Author's Note:**

> this one is significantly darker and more shippy than the last one

Eobard looks over the schematics again, going through each detail for the third time since Cisco gave him the papers. He has to have accounted for this, he's spent far too long planning this journey to have overlooked a detail like a flaw in his mode of transportation. To have made such a careless mistake bothers him, but as much as he'd like to attribute the heavy weight on his chest to the potential disaster brought on by careless planning, he knows it's more than that. Cisco is pacing the hallway leading to the pipeline, a good deal farther back from the door than he's ever felt necessary when conversing with a prisoner. He's fidgeting nervously like he doesn't know what to do with himself, and he won't look Eobard in the eye. His hands had shaken as he'd gone through the completely unnecessary rigamarole of getting the plans into the cell without opening the door, and his relief was all too obvious when he'd been able to back away to a safe distance. As though Eobard has any reason to harm  _him_ , of all people.

"Something on your mind Cisco?" Eobard asks without looking up from the blueprints. He knows exactly what Cisco needs, and he sees no reason to stop giving it now.

"No," comes the reply, petulant and sullen. Eobard waits, one beat, then two, then, "Yes," Cisco gives in, "how did you, uh, fit your reverse-flash suit into that little ring, it is some sort of compressed microtech or . . ."

Eobard feels a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, pleased at how easy it still is to distract Cisco from his fear using his curiosity. He looks up, one eyebrow raised in amusement, and Cisco trails off as though mortified.

"Actually, forget it," he backtracks, with a sulky, self-deprecating smile, "I don't care."

Eobard looks back at the plans, realizing at last that he truly has overlooked this issue. He wants to continue talking with Cisco, and the quiet admission of, "Maybe a little," leaves the conversation wide open, but he needs to figure this out.

"Ronnie's right," he concedes, and he hopes it sounds like the subject change Cisco was silently asking for and not a dismissal, of any kind. "I should have accounted for the temporal sheering."

"Glad we're still good for something," Cisco replies bitterly. It's childish and insecure, and it cries out for reassurance.

Eobard gives it without hesitation. “I’ve never underestimated your contributions Cisco,” he points out, rather reasonably in his own opinion. He's always been careful to give both Cisco and Caitlin every bit of praise they deserve, knowing full well that neither of them receive much validation anywhere else. That's part of why he chose them, that need that only someone like him could fill. He can see why someone might call that manipulative, but Eobard hardly thinks so; he didn't create that need, and he never denied them what he could give, so it's more like reciprocity than anything.

Cisco doesn't react though, his face remains as hard and closed off as it was before Eobard had spoken. He waits another heartbeat, then lowers his eyes to the paper again, partly to reconsider his assessment of Cisco's mood, partly to avoid those cold eyes. "Or Ronnie," he adds, as though he'd merely meant to correct the statement. Cisco needs more, he decides, than a simple confirmation that the STAR Labs employees are useful.

"As a matter of fact," Eobard continues, stepping forward a little, letting a wide, coaxing grin spread across his face. "Do you know how many times I wished you were there with me as I rebuilt the accelerator? Would have been a lot more fun."

He expects Cisco to respond to the deeply personal compliment. The particular reminder of why _he_  was chosen over Hartley Rathaway ought to make him glow with pride, and there was a time when it certainly would have. There might be a token resistance out of youthful stubbornness, a refusal to be pacified in favor of being determinedly angry, but then that wall between them would crumble until it could be wiped away completely with a single fond smile.

What he isn't prepared for is the look of disgust on Cisco's face. That's . . . new. He's never been the recipient of Cisco's disgust before, indeed he doesn't think he's ever seen Cisco exhibit such an emotion. He's seen anger, bitterness, resentment, fear, even mortification and impotent rage, but he's never seen Cisco truly disgusted. Even terrible things are at least interesting to him, this bright eyed believer in a simple dichotomy between good and evil. Eobard had trusted that belief, trusted it to catch him if he should fall out of Barry Allen's good graces, trusted Cisco to think him incapable of true evil. Cisco obviously does think him capable of it now, and that hurts more than he'd like to admit, far more than such a loss should merit. He looks back at the schematics in his hands to hide his surprise, but he feels Cisco's eyes on him.

"Yeah, well," Cisco begins, and it's a dismissal, completely unimpressed by Eobard's efforts to soothe his insecurities, "doesn't change the fact that your nifty little . . . time sphere-"

"Oh is that what you're calling it?" Eobard laughs, relief mingling with his amusement at the familiar game as he catches a glimpse of the old Cisco.  _Nift_ _y_  indeed. 

"Whatever it's called!" Cisco snaps, obviously embarrassed by the slip. "It's gonna blow!"

Cisco's visions of impending disaster are, as ever, a clearing force on Eobard's mind, and immediately the answer comes to him. "Not if you cement the tiles with a cobalt resin that'll prevent degradation in conditions of extreme heat," he corrects, brandishing the papers demonstratively.

"Ok," Cisco says, immediately turning away from him, "fine, we'll try that."

Before he can even think about it Eobard's calling after him. "That's it?" he demands, and there's an embarrassing note of desperation in his voice. He doesn't want Cisco to leave. He doesn't want to leave things like this between them. "That's all?"

"Well what do you want me to say?" Cisco shoots back, sounding incredulous. His eyes are accusatory, and suddenly Eobard finds he can't face them.

"I don't know Cisco," he admits, tossing the papers aside as he turns away from that look. He's angry at Cisco for being so judgmental, and he's angry at himself for making this boy, who's never let his brilliance obscure his idealism, sound so jaded. "I thought that if anyone you'd be a little more understanding of my predicament."

He wants to impress this upon Cisco, wants Cisco to know how this feels, so he leans against the door of his prison, getting as close as the circumstances will allow. "I don't belong here!" he insists, and he searches Cisco's face for some sign of understanding, of sympathy, of anything resembling forgiveness. He finds nothing though, and suddenly his anger feels less justified. "These barbaric-" he knocks his hand against the door in frustration, but his energy is gone, "- _times_."

 _Why don't you see?_ he wants to ask, and ask again and again until he gets a satisfactory answer.  _Why don't you see I had no choice? Do you honestly think I would do this, to you of all people, if there was any other way?_

He hates Barry Allen more than ever now, for ruining what should have been a pleasant dalliance with a brilliant intellect, tainting it with the necessity for deceit and trickery.  _Why don't you see this is **his** fault, not mine?_

It hasn't been so for almost two years now, but when he adds, "It's like living amongst the dead," he finds that it's true once more. The cold, dead look in Cisco's eyes makes it so. He turns away, unable to look at it.

"Is that what you told yourself?" Cisco's voice asks from somewhere behind him, calm as the eye of a storm. "When you killed me?"

It takes him a moment to fully register the words, and once he has he's almost sure he heard them wrong. "What?" he asks, turning to Cisco, his mind racing as it struggles to give shape to his whirring thoughts. "What did you say?"

Cisco looks away, shaking his head as though to clear it, as though to banish the same disbelief that is slowly ebbing away in Eobard's own mind. "It was an alternate timeline," he explains. "One that Barry reset. I never forgot, it just kept coming back to me."

It's impossible. This can't be. It  _can't_  be, but it is, and the air goes heavy and thick in Eobard's throat. He knows the phenomenon that Cisco is describing, knows it all too well. He struggles to link what he knows of the future to what he sees of the present, and finds too many parallels to dismiss. It's too much, far too much, to be a coincidence. How could he have not seen it before?

"And I can still picture the way you looked at me," Cisco goes on, choking back the sob Eobard hears in his throat with anger, masking the tears he won't let show with vitriol and defiance, "when you called me a son."

Eobard closes his eyes. How could he have overlooked this? For all this time? This boy, this beautiful, brilliant child that he let into his heart, and the man that he knows in the future. The man that he's fought, at whose hands he's nearly died more than once. The same person? To think, he's been hiding in plain sight this whole time. For two years. Practically eating out of Eobard's hand. The  _irony_.

"Then you crushed my heart," Cisco concludes, struggling to hold in his rage just as he fights to conceal his pain beneath it. "With your fist."

 _You,_  Eobard thinks, _I know you. I know who you are._

"Cisco," he breathes, and his voice sounds both reverent and pitying, even to his own ears. "I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. He wishes he'd known. The things he could have accomplished with this child at his side. The things that Eobard could have shown him. It isn't fair, to either of them.

"Yeah, it sucked," Cisco bites out, all indignant rage.

"No not for killing you I'm sure I had a good reason," he waves that away, knowing he'd never harm Cisco for anything less. "I'm sorry for the fact that you're able to retain traces of another timeline," he clarifies, "you're able to see through the vibrations of the universe, it means . . ." 

Cisco steps forward, conflicted but curious. He looks so young, impossibly young. For the first time Eobard truly curses the barrier between them, because all he wants is to reach out and touch. Touch that innocence, before it slips away.

"I wasn't sure until just now," he laughs, at the ridiculousness of it all, at how fitting it is. How perfect.

It's like he sees Cisco's entire timeline compressed into this one moment, the boy he is and the man he will become layered over one another, his life in all its lovely parts laid out for Eobard's examination. 

"Sure of what?" Cisco demands impatiently.

"The night the particle accelerator exploded-"  _I made you,_  he thinks as he searches for the words, a way to say it that Cisco will understand. _I made you what you are. What you will become. You are my work. Mine._

At last he settles on, "-you were affected too." A poor substitute for all he wants to say, but there isn't time. If only there were  _time_.

"What are you talking about?" Cisco scoffs. "No-" but he pauses there, his face falling from disbelief into uncertainty, and his next words come out painfully unsure. "I wasn't."

"Don't be afraid Cisco," Eobard gentles, craving one last part of this boy's story, one more chance to guide him. To show him the way. "A great and . . ." he chooses his next word carefully, knowing this is his last chance to cast out a line to tether himself, " _honorable_ destiny awaits you now."

He can feel the lightning inside, like a fire beneath his skin, and he knows that soon Cisco will feel it too. It's just one more thing that connects them, one more way that Cisco will feel Eobard's presence forever.

"I only hope," he says, and with these words he tries to say everything, "that as you're living your great adventure, you remember who gave you that life-"

Cisco will remember, he'll never forget, this fact will haunt him for the rest of his life. As will these words.

"-and that it was given-" 

_My hands, my mind, my power, my mark on you forever, I will **never**  let go, you will  **never**  be free._

"-out of love."

It's true. He couldn't have chosen a worthier recipient for this power, even if he'd tried. There is nothing quite like power, especially power that runs this deep, that seeps into the blood, to bind people together. It is what connects him and Barry Allen, like kin, like two sides of the same coin. There's a certain kind of love in what he has with Barry, this obsession that rules his whole life, that compels him to rule Barry's in an endless circle of morbid need for control. There's certainly love in what he's done for Cisco, the greatest gift he has to give, all for this sweet, clever boy who will become a brilliant, deadly man.

Cisco searches his face for a lie but finds none, and Eobard tries to convey all of his affection in this last, longing look. Whatever Cisco sees frightens him, and he turns and flees from a destiny he cannot outrun. He only stops to close the blast door, sealing Eobard off and sending him back to the dark. It isn't really goodbye though, it's only a matter of time before he sees Cisco again. In the future.

Eobard can't wait.


End file.
